Archive for September, 2010

Today it is generally recognized that agile teams outperform traditional “waterfall” teams with respect to time to market and productivity. Some estimates say that agile teams are 25 to 50 percent more productive than their traditional peers. Others say this number can range from 400-800 percent more productive.

So what are these hyper-productive teams doing differently to achieve such extraordinary results? Ryan Shriver has written an interesting article exploring this topic. http://www.gantthead.com/content/articles/255949.cfm Ryan’s article is based on Dr. Jeff Sutherland’s experience with hyper-productive agile teams.

In this article Ryan outlines the 12 best practices that Sutherland and others attribute to hyper productive team performances. In addition he describes the engineering practices that hyper-productive teams adopt.

In this article one of the best practices that Ryan covers is the concept of “pairing”, when two developers work side-by-side on one computer to implement a story. Working as a team they can work much more quickly than if they worked independently. In addition, pairing helps to mitigate risk and overdependence on key resources that can have a negative impact on productivity.
http://www.gantthead.com/content/articles/255949.cfm According to Ryan, while the practices he describes are simple in concept, those teams that stick with them have historically performed at levels that are hyper productive and far exceed their peers.